


Tick

by Aaron_The_8th_Demon



Category: Original Work
Genre: A lot of love for an old busted pickup truck, Autism, M/M, Missing Persons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-25
Updated: 2019-11-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:27:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21557761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aaron_The_8th_Demon/pseuds/Aaron_The_8th_Demon
Summary: The things that make a house seem empty are always small, weird details. Sometimes, it’s because things are missing. And sometimes it’s things that are still there.
Relationships: Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Comments: 5
Kudos: 9





	Tick

The things that make a house seem empty are always small, weird details. Sometimes, it’s because things are missing. And sometimes it’s things that are still there.

_ “Why do you name all your inanimate objects?” Kyle asked. _

_ “I don’t,” Tick said. “Not all of them. Just the ones that need to have names. Some of them come with their own names.” _

_ “Okay, but why?” _

_ Tick shrugged. “I’unn’o. I just do. They feel like they should have names.” _

The hat’s name is Liev, after the guy who plays the lead in Ray Donovan. But that’s not where Tick knew Liev Schreiber from, it was from some movie or maybe a couple of movies. It’s one of those Russian winter hats with the flaps and it’s too small to fit on Kyle’s head, so Tick would always get upset when he tried to put it on because maybe he would rip it. It’s weird that the hat is still sitting in its spot on the counter. It’s weird that so many of Tick’s things are still here. Only a couple of them are gone… but there’s a giant empty space in the driveway where Tick’s truck should be.

_ Tick was so happy when Kyle got a new truck. Because the old truck was paid off, so now it’s Tick’s truck. He shelled out a hundred-fifty-something for the registration, another six hundred in insurance, and there was his entire disability check for the month of February but he didn’t care because he finally had his own truck. Now they both had trucks, and Tick could go places on his own again. It was so funny, how he was bad off enough to be unable to work, but could still drive by himself. _

_ Tick always took really good care of his truck, too. He remembered to change the windshield wipers when they got shitty and every so often when he filled the gas tank he’d put in fuel injector cleaner with it. He loved his truck the way he loved all his inanimate objects, and like most of his things he’d get dicey about letting anyone else touch it. So Kyle sat back and watched, secretly laughing but in a fond way to himself - he watched Tick love on this beat to shit 2006 Tacoma with a hundred and fifty thousand miles on its engine. Nobody could love such unlovable objects the way Tick could. _

The truck is a big empty space. But there are other things, too… a small space, much smaller than the one taken up by the truck, on the counter near the hat. It’s only a couple feet long and maybe a foot wide, this space, and it’s where the meters usually live. Those, Tick took with him.

_ “It cost me more than two hundred bucks,” Tick complained as he fiddled with the little dial to adjust the amount of voltage from the battery. “And then it got held up in customs for a month. I don’t even think the check-source is NRC exempt, it might be illegal. You can’t usually get Strontium-90 check sources.” _

_ Kyle nodded. “So what kind of check sources can you get legally?” _

_ “Boring shit like uranium glass beads and things like that. I really want one of those radium watches, but you can’t get those anywhere, not even eBay.” Tick finished playing with the dials on the meter and snapped the probe onto its handle. “Here, stick out your neck.” _

_ Kyle held still and let Tick check his thyroid gland. There were no unusual readings to be found. _

And along with the Russian DP-5 Geiger counter, there was a five-gas meter. Tick didn’t get that one himself, though, Kyle stole it for Tick when he still worked for a hazmat contractor by putting the batteries in backwards and saying it was broken in order to fish it out of the garbage before going home. The five-gas meter is gone, too, with the radiation detector and a pair of chemical overboots from an OZK set. Two more ordinary items are also missing: a camouflage Gore Tex windbreaker and a yellow Boston Bruins snapback. It wasn’t cold enough yet for Liev, so Tick chose the baseball cap instead on the day that he went on his survey.

_ “The water there’s bright orange. I might actually find something for once.” _

_ “If you do, you can’t take it home with you, we don’t have any proper containment,” Kyle reminded him for the hundredth time. Not like it mattered. Tick never found anything. “And if it’s something IDLH, you have to call me first before you do anything.” _

_ “But what if you’re still at work and I can’t get you?” _

_ “Then text me and wait for me to say something, and while you’re waiting you need to be at a safe distance.” _

Kyle thinks about these things every day on the drives to and from work. He left work that morning and Tick was still sleeping.

_ It took until almost eight at night for Kyle to figure out that something was wrong. He got home and Tick’s truck wasn’t there, so maybe he’d just been out getting groceries or playing a pickup hockey game or something. But at 7:49 Kyle noticed the spot on the counter, where the detectors should’ve been but weren’t. _

_ And he still didn’t think much of it at first. Maybe Tick did find something, and was so engrossed in studying it with the Geiger counter that he didn’t care about the sky getting dark. But after a few minutes he realized that Tick would’ve called or texted, if not for safety reasons then at least to brag about it. Kyle checked his phone. No messages. He called Tick and got the voicemail, hung up instead of leaving a message. He called again a minute and a half later to the same exact amount of nothing. _

_ Kyle put on his shoes and got in his truck - maybe Tick got lost or hurt or something. He had kind of a rough idea of where Tick went, so he brought a flashlight and drove over to where Tick probably was. No beat to shit Tacoma in sight. So maybe Tick was somewhere else. But it was eight at night, and if not here then Kyle had really no idea where Tick or his truck could be. It was too big of an area to search by himself. _

_ But he could just picture it - Tick in those chemical boots, wearing fatigue pants and his windbreaker with a Geiger counter strapped to his chest and a five-gas meter clipped to his belt, sitting in that toxic orange muck with a broken leg or something. _

_ Kyle couldn’t stand the cops. They were worthless. He called them anyway. He had no other choice. _

_ It took almost half an hour for an officer to show up. And because Tick was twenty three and not a child, she clearly didn’t think this was a big deal. She paid lip service to Kyle’s explanation and concerns, and finally he’d had enough. _

_ “Look, you don’t get it, he has autism and he probably got lost or something!” _

_ “Have you tried calling his cell?” _

_ Kyle almost started tearing his hair out on the spot. _

That damn truck, though… Tick so loved his truck. There’s a mark in the grass where he would park on the front lawn no matter how many times he was told not to do that, so now it’s just a line of dirt in the shape of a tire track.

_ Kyle called out sick from work the next morning and drove back there. Some police were looking, but there definitely weren’t enough of them and they didn’t even have dogs. Kyle was wearing his own pair of rubber boots and a backpack - a roll of duct tape, some rope, a first aid kit. In his hand he had the “little detector,” a small handheld electronic dosimeter that had cost Tick about half as much as the big chunky DP-5 did. Kyle had a hunch - if he found radiation, he could find Tick. _

_ After walking for almost two hours Kyle didn’t find Tick. _

_ He found Tick’s truck. _

_ The damn thing was just sitting in the middle of the orange chemical swamp, slightly sunk into a spread of dying grass. The driver’s door was unlocked and when Kyle looked in the cab it was still set to be in four wheel drive. But maybe this was good. He found Tick’s truck. Maybe now he could find Tick, because Tick was never very far away from the truck. _

_ Kyle stood and thought about this for a second. He tried to think like Tick, which way Tick would walk away from the Tacoma, a meter in each hand. Probably in the stupidest, most dangerous direction possible, because that would be the most likely area for Tick to discover something radioactive or exotically toxic. Kyle chose exactly that direction. The thought led to - did Tick wear a respirator? Maybe he got exposed to something and became poisoned. Kyle couldn’t remember if he saw all Tick’s respirators on their shelf in the living room before he left this morning. _

_ And Kyle walked. He held the little detector out in front of him, switching hands when his arm got tired. Thanks to Tick’s rambling he knew that background radiation averaged at thirty microroentgens or less, here it was about thirty five in most spots but that was nothing to worry about. What  _ did _ get worrying was when the meter suddenly started beeping more than once every five seconds and the number on the screen jumped to two hundred and twenty. Kyle pointed it in a couple other directions until he was sure which way to walk, and kept going forward, watching the dose rate climb. Tick would be here. He knew it. _

_ The little detector hit one milliroentgen - that’s not normal. It wasn’t immediately dangerous, but it sure as hell wasn’t ordinary. Kyle looked around and took a few steps. The dose rate stayed where it was, hovering between nine hundred and eighty microroentgens and one point one milliroentgens. _

_ And there in the dead grass… yellow. _

_ A bright yellow snapback, with the logo of the Boston Bruins on the front. _

_ Tick would not ever leave this hat on the ground. The Bruins and hockey in general were part of his identity as a person. Anything he wore with the Bruins logo on it was beyond sacred, on the same level as Liev or the truck. _

_ Tick would not ever,  _ ever _ drop this hat. _

_ But the hat was here. _

_ And Tick wasn’t. _

It’s been two months.

Tick’s still missing. His hat got taken as evidence and the DEP is investigating the unacceptable levels of radioactivity in the chemically-polluted swamp. The Tacoma got towed away for… something. Kyle’s not sure what exactly. Technically, Tick’s still being looked for, but it doesn’t really seem like he’ll be found by now. No trace, not of him or his chemical boots or his expensive meters. Just his truck and his hat left in the muck.

For Tick, there’s reasons behind almost everything - he’s called Tick because his baby brother could only say that, not pronounce the whole name Patrick. The list of things with no reason is very short.

There’s no reason Tick names inanimate objects.

There’s no reason Tick left his Geiger counter out instead of storing it in its box.

And there’s no reason he’ll never be found.


End file.
